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Wednesday, June 21, 2017

The 10 Best WooCommerce Plugins For Boosting Your Revenue

Online sales climb higher year after year and now is the best time to get into the ecommerce game. If you’re looking for a platform to start with then WooCommerce is easy to setup, very secure, and it runs on WordPress which means it’s 100% free.

But just launching WooCommerce is only the first step. You then have to setup a usable shop with features that actually encourage users to buy.

That’s why we’ve curated this list of 10 great plugins you can use to boost your WooCommerce shop’s revenues and keep customers coming back for more.

1. Product Enquiry

You should do anything you can to ease customers towards a purchase. This might include adding tons of product photos, user reviews, or even adding a question box with the Product Enquiry plugin.

This is a free plugin for WooCommerce that lets customers ask questions directly about a product they’re considering buying. It’s a great way to clear up any confusion on materials, sizing, shipping, or anything related to your products (physical or digital).

Naturally you could just add a contact page on your site and tell users to message you there. But with Product Enquiry you can grab their attention right on the product page. It also lets you forward emails to different people and you can offer specific enquiry options based on the item.

It’s definitely a subtle feature but for a newer shop this can go a long way towards building trust with hesitant customers.

2. WPB Related Products Slider

The popularity of “related posts” can be seen on every major blog and news site on the net. And with the Related Products Slider plugin you can add this feature to your ecommerce shop too.

Related items work well to keep visitors on your site and possibly increase the size of their order. But adding related items manually is exceptionally tough, so it’s best to let an algorithm automate the process.

This free plugin handles all the product selection based on tags, categories, and keywords.

Each slider is fully interactive and responsive for all devices. It comes with two default themes but it’s also very dev-friendly so feel free to carve up a theme that matches the design of your site.

3. Product FAQs

If you’ve ever shopped on Amazon or eBay you’ve likely seen the “buyer question” areas. Customers often have specific questions about products before buying and this product FAQ plugin adds the same functionality to your WooCommerce store.

Whenever a new question gets submitted you can be notified by email right away. This lets you answer questions promptly and even delete some that are duplicates or just don’t make sense.

But if the customer has an account they can even get notified when you answer the question too.

You can set certain FAQs to publish live on the site for everyone to see while others can be answered privately. This is best used as a public plugin since it benefits all of your customers.

4. WPB Accordion Menu

Larger ecommerce shops often have multi-level categories that don’t fit into traditional horizontal menus. But dropdown accordion menus solve this problem since they can be lengthy and they’re toggleable within any category.

Once installed you can drag the accordion widget into your sidebar and setup the details. This lets you assign a menu along with ordering the items and certain display properties. It even comes with built-in icon support if you want to add custom icons onto each category in your list.

This is a freemium plugin with some options to go pro. But for most users I think the free option is more than enough.

5. Order Delivery Date

If you’re selling physical products then delivery dates are always a concern. With some ecommerce shops guaranteeing 1-day or 2-day delivery it’s good to support your customers as much as possible.

That’s why the Order Delivery Date plugin is an excellent addition to any checkout process. This adds a custom date picker into the form so your customers can select when they’d prefer to have the item delivered.

You have full control over the calendar’s settings including which dates are excluded(for example weekends). This plugin even counts the total number of deliveries per day so you can limit the amount to a reasonable number.

I think this works best for companies that offer services or direct consultations along with products. This way you’re physically in charge of the delivery and not reliant on a mail carrier to match your deadlines.

6. WooCommerce Image Zoom

Almost every ecommerce site you visit will have the hover-to-zoom feature for product photos. Whenever the customer needs a closer look at any product they can just hover to get a close-up shot.

This requires high-resolution pictures and a plugin like WooCommerce Image Zoom. With a one-click install this plugin is ready to go right after you click “activate”. The default settings work perfectly and it’s extremely lightweight.

The entire zooming feature runs on a jQuery plugin called Elevate Zoom. This means it does require jQuery, but WordPress typically includes this by default in most themes.

If you’re looking for more customizable features this does have a pro version too. But for any simple WooCommerce website I would recommend sticking to the free version, especially when first testing it out.

7. My Account Widget

To build your email list and increase sales you should encourage user signups. Once a user has an account on your site they’ll have an easier time buying something and feel more comfortable with the process.

By adding the WooCommerce My Account Widget into your layout you can add a personal touch to the user account setup. Once the user logs into their account they should have access to their cart, their current orders, and any unpaid orders currently pending shipment.

It’s a wonderfully well-designed plugin and it should blend into just about any website. By default it has a pretty bland style but it’s also incredibly simple to redesign. And the user account links are genuinely helpful which can ultimately increase time on site and overall sales volume.

8. Product Slider

The first step of a sale is getting the user’s attention and showcasing some products. And by adding a custom slideshow you can immediately grab attention while showing off a bunch of products at once!

WPB’s free Product Slider plugin can fit anywhere on your site with tons of customizable settings. You can add pretty much any products you like regardless of style or photo size.

This also comes with a simple flat design that’s fully responsive and easy to re-style as needed.

On the settings page you can change the rotation speed, pagination style, total products on display and many other minor features. This is by far the best free product slideshow plugin for WooCommerce and it’s a cinch to setup.

9. Wishlist Plugin

When customers see your site as a brand they’ll be more likely to use their profile frequently. That’s why the Wishlist Plugin is such a valuable asset for more established ecommerce shops.

If someone has an account on your site they’ll see a button next to each product to add that item into their wishlist. Potential customers can bookmark products they like and keep them all saved in one handy location.

On this page the user can add certain items into their shopping cart, view total inventory, and even check when certain items go on sale.

This comes with a very simple design but you also have access to edit the CSS and customize the layout yourself. It’s definitely a top-notch plugin to keep people coming back for more.

10. WooCommerce Cart Tab

When customers add items into their cart they usually need to click onto a new page just to view everything. Most of the time this is fine. But why not give them easier access when possible?

Once you install this plugin you can choose how it displays and what features should be included. It is definitely one of the cooler plugins in this list and it’s a feature most online shoppers appreciate when available.

But think of combining this plugin with a few others from this guide to really improve usability and ultimately increase sales.